SARAH FLEISS

American soprano Sarah Fleiss is pursuing her Master's degree at the Curtis Institute of Music. This past spring at Curtis, she sang Ginevra in Handel’s Ariodante under the baton of David Stern and with the Tempesta di Mare orchestra. This summer, she travelled to Houston for the HGO Young Artist's Vocal Academy and to Switzerland to attend the Atelier Lyrique at the Verbier Festival where she worked closely with pianist James Baillieu and participated in masterclasses with Lise Davidsen, Thomas Hampson, Véronique Gens and James Garnon. She recently went on tour with Eric Owens and members of the Curtis Opera Theater, singing the Brahms Neue Liebeslieder Op. 65, among other art song and operatic repertoire. She also premiered In the Fields, a song cycle written by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer  Tania  León and performed in a recital along with one of the world's most sought-after collaborative pianists, Warren Jones. 

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In the 2021/22 season, she attended the Music Academy of the West as a studio artist, sang Despina in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Monica in Menotti’s The Medium, Milli in the world premiere of 24 (La cura per-amore). She also sang in masterclasses with Sonia Prina, Dolora Zajick and Golda Schultz. In partnership with the Temple Institute on Disabilities and SoundLab, she sang the world premiere of Robert Whalen’s Lost Time, an art song compiling the words of people who use Voice Assistant Technology. A lover of electronic music, she also had the privilege of interviewing DJ Alfred Darlington- better known as Daedelus- on the topics ranging from humans desire for connection to the primordial nature of music. 

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Sarah was named the winner of the 2023 Hal Leonard Vocal Competition, the emerging artist winner of the Rochester Oratorio Society Competition and the 2022 1st Prize winner of the Shirley Rabb Winston Scholarship by the National Society of Arts and Letters. She has received scholarships from the George London Foundation and Voce di Meche, an encouragement award from the Gerda Lissner Foundation and has been named a finalist in the Camile Coloratura, Opera Grand Rapids, and Orpheus Vocal Competitions. 

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Prior to Curtis, Sarah attended Columbia University and the Juilliard-Exchange program. At Columbia, she sang Pamina in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Rosalinda in Die Fledermaus with the Columbia New Opera Workshop, and narrated Stravinsky’s L'Histoire du soldat. She also has performed around New York City various in musical theater and cabaret-style performances, including with the Irish Repertory Theatre and at NYU.

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With an extensive background in musical theatre, she strives to have a broad artistic approach, straddling repertoire not only within opera, recital, and early music, but to multimedia and electronic music as well.